Celebrity Australian chef Luke Nguyen grills pork chops on Ton That Hiep Street in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 11

Vietnamese cooking is the best, says an Australian son of Vietnamese expats, and he wants the whole world to know it.

Nguyen’s love of cooking comes from his food-obsessed parents, who owned a restaurant called Pho Cay Du for over 15 years and where he helped out from the age of six.

From there he went on to work under some of Sydney’s top chefs, broadening his knowledge and honing his skills every step of the way.

Together with his sister Pauline and her husband, Nguyen opened his first restaurant in 2002 when he was only 23.

The Red Lantern in Surry Hills soon became one of the most popular dining spots in Sydney and picked up the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association of Australia’s “Best Restaurant” award in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

In 2006, Nguyen starred in a 10- episode series about Vietnamese cooking called “Food Safari.” It was hosted by Maeve O’Meara and screened on Australia’s ABC and the Lifestyle channel.

When asked what his parents thought of his food, Nguyen said his mother was his strongest critic. But then, he would never serve his conservative parents a dish like scallop salad. Only traditional food for them, he said.

In 2007, Murdoch Books published Nguyen’s first cookbook, “Secrets of the Red Lantern,” with a section on his family’s story told by his sister.

It contains more than 275 traditional Vietnamese recipes alongside a visual narrative of food and family photographs that follows the family’s moving to Australia to the birth of the Red Lantern.

At the heart of each recipe is the power of food to elevate and transform. “Secrets of the Red Lantern” shares the rich culinary heritage of the Nguyen family and their personal story of perseverance through homesickness, heartache and the upheavals of change.

Traditional and exacting recipes like bun rieu (crab paste and tomato soup with rice vermicelli) and goi du du (green papaya salad with prawns and pork) reveal just how deep the family’s ties are to Vietnam.

The result is a beautiful journey through Vietnamese history, culture and tradition.

Nguyen has often traveled to his parents’ homeland to make half-hour programs for Australian television.

For the past year he has been back and forth preparing for his second full series, traveling to the mountains of Sapa; Hanoi (with its strong French influence); the former capital Hue city; the old quarter of historic Hoi An; and Saigon and the Mekong Delta down south; missing little in between.

Now, an Australian film crew has just finished shooting the first episodes of “Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam” in Ho Chi Minh City and has already moved on to other provinces.

The 45-minute episodes capturing Vietnam’s food, culture, bustling markets, street vendors and much besides, will be broadcast on Australia’s SBS, and the Travel and Living and Discovery channels later this year.

“Australians are familiar with Chinese and Thai food,” Nguyen said. “I want them to learn more about Vietnamese food through this show.

“I want them to know that Vietnam has good food, good people and beautiful places. The biggest goal of my life is to prove to the world that Vietnamese food is the best!”

His director, Michael Francis Donnelly, is thrilled by the fresh and healthy ingredients in every dish of the Vietnamese people.

Donnelly was just as impressed by the street vendors that carry their food on poles just about everywhere. He found their mobility fascinating in itself.

But most of all, he was amazed that such a tiny country, as he described it, can have such a diversity of food and cooking. “It’s beyond my imagination,” he said. His colleagues felt the same.

Since you can never have too much of a good thing, they plan to return next year to shoot a second series, with the emphasis on the north-central and northern regions.

Nguyen is also working on his next book of regional recipes and travel stories from Vietnam.

Source: Tuoi Tre